Off the Endz!

Synopsis

David, Kojo and Sharon grew up on a London estate. Now in their mid 20s, they’re eyeing another kind of life. But how do you choose the right path when temptation lies around every corner? If your emotional or financial debt is sky high, how do you buy your way out?

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 22 February 2010

For her main stage debut, with her third major play, the promisingly talented Bola Agbaje creates a cheeky black version echo of the Royal Court’s most famous debutant, John Osborne, with an ironing board, a female domestic doormat and two bantering male friends.

In Off the Endz, Sharon (Lorraine Burroughs) is a hard-working nurse living with a well-intentioned, aspirational businessman Kojo (Daniel Francis) whose best mate David (Ashley Walters), a habitual offender, and Sharon’s former boyfriend, has just come out of prison.

The title refers not so much to the state we’re in as the estate we’re on, as Agbaje takes a scalpel to the rows and tensions between young blacks trying to find ways of improving themselves.

But she doesn’t flinch from some pretty nasty stuff; David is a foul-mouthed, abusive scumbag, with Neanderthal social attitudes and a leech-like dependency on his friends’ hospitality.

As dir...

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Latest User Review

rds - 10 March 2010:

Patchy acting and a somewhat implausible script didn't help, but having said that it managed to hold my attention, even with inappropriate squeals from a certain section of the audience, for the 1 hr 20 mins it ran. Monday night had a large contingent of Americans in, no doubt on a London theatre trip, gawd knows what they made of it? I'm sure the cast were more than up to the job, but were let down by a script which wad not fully gestated and by a director who wasn't sure what he was trying to achieve. Still it was great to see Ashley Walters again, who I rate highly as an actor, and who certainly got many of the audience going when he did his nude scene - the squeals of delight when his manhood flashed were, no doubt, as much in terror as admiration. ...

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